Fresh Meat Info

[*kirty*]

So if there are homes available for these horses, why are they at the sales? If there are homes available, why is the dogger the highest bidder? They don't bid high so its not like people can't outbid them. Maybe you should be condemning the people who sent these horses to the doggers, instead of the guy just doing his job. The racing industry that encourages breeding and disposal of thousands of horses every year is more to blame than the dogger.

All meat products come from animals who have been killed, often not particularly humanely.

[sheena]

If it wern't for the "doggers"...what would happen to these thousands of unwanted horses ??? OK...so stop the horse sales...then what happens to the unwanted horses??? Turned out in National Parks maybe to become ferel....left in paddocks without any medical/foot treatment till they die a slow & painful death from worms & footrot. We sent a horse off to the sales once. He was a lovely palamino colt, but he had already tried to kill two very experienced people that tried to handle him. I certainly hope that he went to the doggers & that some poor person didn't buy him & try to take him home. We did inform the auctioner of his problems.

[espinay2]

Was a time when having a horse fed to the hounds at the end of its useful life was considered an honourable and noble end.

The doggers clean up the messes made by others. It is the other end of the chain that needs fixing if anything is to be fixed.

I have bought from Burns before and found the quality to be good. Like DC we sometimes will do a run down and stock up.

As an aside, DC can you tell me more about your Canberra source please? Always on the lookout for good local suppliers.

[corvus]

We get ours from Ashbrook farms in Lansvale. It was recommended to us by the owner of the dog kennels where we left our dogs over New Year last year. The quality is quite good and it's fresh. I'm actually not sure what the chicken mince costs. It's quite coarse and probably moderately fatty. We were out there last week and picked up 15kg of chicken mince, a box of marylands (5kg? Can't remember) a couple of femur bones, 5kg of lamb brisket, 2kg of chicken liver, 3 lamb shanks and I think maybe 8 pig trotters. It cost about $80. Never had any problems with them.

[DeltaCharlie]

As an aside, DC can you tell me more about your Canberra source please? Always on the lookout for good local suppliers.

Speak to Jimmy at Cardawan Pets in Queanbeyan. Tell him Bec and Tammy sent you :)

His meat comes in every 2nd Friday (off pay week for public service, ie a few days ago). It is minced fresh that morning and usually arrives about 1pm. Anything not sold fresh he repackages into smaller bags and freezes so you can always buy smaller quantities at other times. The meat is so popular that he is now buying over 600kg a fortnight to keep up with demand and has just started to get chicken in too (it used to just be beef or roo). Sometimes it is minced, sometimes it is diced but its the same meat just not always prepared the same. When it is diced you can see just how good the quality is- looks like steak we would eat ourselves :)

[Dog_Horse_Girl]

The racing industry doesn't HAVE to be responsible for its oversupply of horses BECAUSE of the dogger's willingness to take on so many of its cast-offs. In each sale I go to there are at least four separate doggers and each buys from 20 to 40 horses at a time, more if there is stock available (and on big sales days there is always more stock available). Some they immediately on-sell to bidders that weren't successful at the sales for various reasons (friends of mine were too timid to keep bidding on horses they really wanted on the understanding that they could approach the doggers afterwards, accept the hugely inflated price and take the horse home). That's fairly common knowledge among private buyers at the sales.

I'm not saying that NO horses should be dogged - that's kind of difficult to justify, almost like saying that no pound dog should be PTS. But when there are countless sound and sane YOUNG animals being slaughtered just because we allow it to happen and we allow people to profit from it, then IMO that's wrong. I think that's a bit different to the "noble" end in bygone generations...and haven't we learnt anything since those days anyway? Perhaps not.

[WreckitWhippet]

As an aside, DC can you tell me more about your Canberra source please? Always on the lookout for good local suppliers.

Speak to Jimmy at Cardawan Pets in Queanbeyan. Tell him Bec and Tammy sent you :)

His meat comes in every 2nd Friday (off pay week for public service, ie a few days ago). It is minced fresh that morning and usually arrives about 1pm. Anything not sold fresh he repackages into smaller bags and freezes so you can always buy smaller quantities at other times. The meat is so popular that he is now buying over 600kg a fortnight to keep up with demand and has just started to get chicken in too (it used to just be beef or roo). Sometimes it is minced, sometimes it is diced but its the same meat just not always prepared the same. When it is diced you can see just how good the quality is- looks like steak we would eat ourselves :)

That's who I used when I lived in Canberra and was never unhappy with the quality or what he had to offer.

[AussieGTA]

lillysmum,

If the racing industry are not to blame because the doggers clean up the mess, then by the same logic the RSPCA is to blame not BYB and puppy mills. As for the practice of paying over inflated prices after the sale because you don't want to bid, more fool them they obviously have more money than brains.

Can we get back to the topic now?

Edited January 13, 2013 by AussieGTA

[Dog_Horse_Girl]

lillysmum,

If the racing industry are not to blame because the doggers clean up the mess, then by the same logic the RSPCA is to blame not BYB and puppy mills. As for the practice of paying over inflated prices after the sale because you don't want to bid, more fool them they obviously have more money than brains.

Can we get back to the topic now?

Is that what you think I said?

Of course the racing industry is to blame but while-ever doggers buy unwanted race horses, the industry itself doesn't HAVE TO ACT to slow the over-breeding it creates. It's NO different to the greyhound industry except unwanted hounds used to be either starved, shot or abandoned by their trainers. It's a little harder to do that with an animal the size of a horse and besides, a horse is always worth some money because the doggers will always buy them for their meat. Not quite the case with greyhounds though.

So you're calling my friends fools or foolish? Perhaps if you see how aggressive these doggers are at the sales and how fast the auctioneers move, you'd have a greater appreciation for the situation. Throw in the fairly significant fact that the doggers are on first-name terms with everyone who works in the sales industry, and you have a huge amount of familiarity between the parties that the mere horse-loving public don't always have. Rapport is crucial...and the doggers have it in spades. Their business relies on this as much as they rely on people who consume any of their products. That's on topic as far as I'm concerned.